We’re one week closer to the college football season, folks. If you’re counting at home, it’s five weeks away. This past week, the Big Ten held its annual Big Ten Media Days and there was plenty of news emerging from Chicago. Check out BTN.com’s top 10 stories from the week that was in this post.

Isn’t late July great? Football is in the air, with kickoff a little more than a month away, and all the teams – even the perennial cellar dwellers – are tied for first place. Coincidentally, when coaches descend upon media days, everyone’s very excited. The Big Ten is no exception. According to The Wall Street Journal, Big Ten coaches uttered some form of the word “excited” 43 times during Thursday’s question-and-answer session at Big Ten Media Days. See who used “excited” the most in this post.

We capped off our coverage of the two-day Big Ten Media and Kickoff Luncheon with the 90-minute TV show Big Ten Football Kickoff Luncheon Special, with Dave Revsine, Gerry DiNardo and Howard Griffith. It included various interviews and analysis from the event in Chicago. Watch a number of video clips from that Friday night show in this post.

Bill O’Brien created quite the stir when he hinted at possible Penn State uniform changes during Thursday’s first session of Big Ten Media Days. With the recent changes going on at Penn State, it seems plausible that the team would entertain such a decision.

Don’t envy everything about Wisconsin’s Ricky Wagner. Yes, the left tackle is one of the Badgers’ perennial can’t-miss Big Uglies, but he and the rest of the Big Ten offensive linemen have their work cut out for them in 2012.

We posted all available video from Thursday press conferences and now present the entire collection to in this post. It includes all 12 football coaches talking about their football teams and taking questions from reporters. Don’t forget: BTN airs a 90-minute Big Ten Football Kickoff Luncheon Special at 8 p.m. ET, hosted by Dave Revsine, with analysis from BTN’s Gerry DiNardo and Howard Griffith. Watch it live on BTN/BTN2Go.

The Big Ten mascots always seem to have the best time when they come to Chicago for the Big Ten Football Media Day and Kickoff Luncheon, and this year was no exception. Bucky, Brutus, Herky, Sparty, Herbie, and Purdue Pete stopped by “Good Day Chicago” and took over the local Fox affiliate’s TV newsroom during BTN’s appearance to promote Saturday’s BTN Big10K race downtown.